PURPOSE: Ample studies have documented that working memory (WM) load has a comprehensive influence on selective attention in perception. Moreover, the influence of WM on selective attention is modulated by the type of WM subsystem, by revealing opposite modulation by central executive and visual WM. However,  no study so far has examined the influence of WM load of binding on selective attention. Moreover, there are two opposite views as to this issue: On the one hand, an independent episodic buffer is suggested to be in charge of binding with the attention from of central executive, suggesting that binding load will functions as a type of central executive; on the other hand, recent studies revealed that object-based attention plays a key role in both visual WM and binding representation in WM, implying that binding load will serve as a type of visual WM load. To this end, we examined the influence of WM load of binding on selective attention by requiring the participants to memorize two or five bindings in WM.
METHODS: Critically, a low load perceptual task was interpolated in the maintenance phase of WM. The low load perceptual task contained either a low-priority target or was an response competition task.
RESULTS: In three experiments, we found that high WM load of binding led to reduced detection of low-priority target (Experiments 1-2), and less interference from the distractor in the response competition task (Experiment 3).
CONCLUSION: These results suggest that WM load of binding is similar to visual WM load, serving as a type of perceptual load and hence competing resources with the perceptual task.